Archives par étiquette : The Gernert Company

WHAT IS THINKING? de James Somers

A writer and programmer takes us under the hood of AI and inside the human mind to reveal the secrets of thinking. For readers of Steven Pinker and Daniel Kahneman.

WHAT IS THINKING?
AI and the Secrets of the Mind
by James Somers
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, publication date TBD
(via The Gernert Company)

When James Somers graduated high school in 2005, the mind was essentially a black box: forall the progress neuroscientists were making in understanding the brain, the mechanics of thinking itself remained elusive. Meanwhile, the computer scientists working on artificial intelligence were no further along in their own field. Deep Blue had used brute force to defeat Garry Kasparov in 1997, but evaluating hundreds of millions of positions per second had little in common with human thinking. To many of its practitioners, genuine AI seemed centuries away. In order to build a machine that could think, we had to first understand what thinking is – right?

Two decades later, we are in the midst of an intellectual revolution. The Turing test is in the rearview mirror, AI grows more powerful by the month, and we now have the beginnings of an operational understanding of how thinking works. How? Surprisingly, it is the building of AI models that is inspiring neuroscientists to probe the activity of individual artificial neurons. They are learning that the essential mechanics of intelligence are surprisingly simple–and they function in much the same way for both humans and AI. It seems that current AI models are doing much more than merely predicting the next word in a sentence, as their detractors suggest. James argues that they are in fact doing something a lot like thinking.

In WHAT IS THINKING? Somers explores a core set of ideas about how humans think that is so beautiful and clear, he believes they should be understood by every educated person, as we do the principles of natural selection, or the basic structure of DNA.

James Somers is a writer and programmer. He has contributed to The Atlantic and The New Yorker where, over the past decade, he has written stories about science and technology, on everything from the science of avalanches, to a legendary duo of Google programmers, to the vanishing art of coding in the age of AI. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.

WHERE KINGDOMS WANDER de Brandon Lee

The first in a multi-book series set in a world that exists on the backs of behemoth creatures – beasts so big that entire kingdoms are built upon their fur or scales or shells.

WHERE KINGDOMS WANDER
by Brandon Lee
Del Rey, pubilcation date TBD
(via The Gernert Company)

Kian leads a quiet life with his niece, Oli, when inter-behemoth politics put their behemoth, Tato, in alliance with the much-distrusted Mammont. When Tato begins a new migration route, leading to new attacks by blind, winged demonic monsters called Blights, Mammont ‘protects’ Tato’s citizens and, in one tragic incident, discovers an innate magical ability residing in Oli. Desperate to resist his past and Mammont’s influence, Kian flees with his niece, unable to hide his secrets anymore.

Brandon Lee (aka TurtleMe) is one of the biggest webcomic stars. He will publish a webcomic of WHERE KINGDOMS WANDER simultaneously with the print edition to maximize fervor among his rabid fan base.

TurtleMe’s Western fantasy webcomic series The Beginning After the End has been hugely successful with millions of views and the #1 webcomic on Tapas, a popular webcomic platform.

Brandon Lee is a rising star in the world of fantasy literature, and his work continues to captivate readers around the globe. His works have been released internationally in countries such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, Indonesia, France, Germany, Mexico, and India. When he’s not writing, TurtleMe can be found indulging in his love of books, comics, and games. He also enjoys spending time outdoors, taking walks with his wife, Grace, and their dog, Roy, who often gets into mischief.

EMPTY AND MARVELOUS de Melissa Broder

From the beloved, bestselling author of Milk Fed and Death Valley, a darkly comedic novel about existential anxiety, angels, and Ralphs supermarket; a picaresque of the psyche turned tale of supernatural eros.

EMPTY AND MARVELOUS
by Melissa Broder
Scribner, May 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

A writer in Los Angeles dares tell herself, “All is well.” With this newfound serenity, she allows herself to search online for Emil, the ex she barricaded from her life. She is shocked to discover that her intoxicating former flame—the inspiration for her cult classic erotic novel The Pegasus—has died by suicide. The writer must keep the revelation a secret from her husband, because her romance with Emil almost ended their once-open marriage. She can’t share it with her publisher, who expects her to go on book tour in a matter of days (to the delight of anxious teens with their own questions about life). And given the dangerous window that Emil’s death blows open on her own depression, the writer is determined not to face it herself.

There’s only one place she feels safe, connected to humanity and the spark of the divine: the Westwood branch of Ralphs supermarket. And when she begins receiving ethereal messages among the meatstuffs and produce, sublime sexts that seem to be coming from Emil in angel form, the writer discovers that she wants to live. But only inside the supermarket.

EMPTY AND MARVELOUS is a brazenly funny, cathartic, mystically lustful novel about a woman grappling with her existence. As she contends with grief, secret pleasure, and a crisis of faith, we wonder: Do cosmic threads exist between people? What is the responsibility of an artist to her fans? And can angels actually sext? A love letter to readers, the Muses, and the cereal aisle, EMPTY AND MARVELOUS is a marvel.

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Death Valley, Milk Fed, and The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five collections of poems, including Superdoom. Her books are translated in over a dozen languages. Broder has written for The New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Bon Appetit, Bookforum, and New York Magazine. She lives in Los Angeles.

OPPO de Christopher Beha

From National Book Award–longlisted Christopher Beha, a gripping, twisty novel that pulls back the curtain on who really tips the needle of politics and updates the great political thrillers of the past—those from Graham Greene, John LeCarré, and Robert Stone—for our own fractured, tumultuous era.

OPPO
by Christopher Beha
Tin House, May 2027
(via The Gernert Company)

When tech billionaire Romulus Rice buys the Washington Star, the paper’s journalists celebrate, thinking they will finally have the resources to compete with the new media giants and return the Star to its glory days. With a lawless president—Rice’s fellow tech oligarch, Mario Adrian—having seized power through questionable means, the country has never needed their work more. But Rice installs a former tabloid hack with a worryingly friendly relationship to the president as the paper’s new editor, and the staff is left with a choice: stick around to fight the good fight, or jump from a sinking ship.

One of the Star’s hottest young reporters, Keith Reece, chooses to jump—joining a prominent opposition research firm run by former Star reporter Tony Greenstone. His colleague—and work wife—Colleen McDormand stays behind, becoming the paper’s White House correspondent. From their different perches, Colleen and Keith each stumble on a dramatic conspiracy that will ultimately implicate not just President Adrian but also Greenstone and Rice. As they tussle professionally and personally, the pair comes to question how much they can trust each other—or anyone else.

Taking place over the course of a single, crucial election season, OPPO builds toward a startling climax in which Colleen and Keith are both forced to question who and what they’ve been working for all along, and whether they are rebuilding their world . . . or destroying it.

« Oppo is everything a political thriller needs to be: smart, sharp, and incisive—without being cynical. I couldn’t put it down.” —Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl

“Cannily conceived and fetchingly populated, Beha’s Oppo is a subversive delight. Our politics and news media have given us little thrill of late—but this wonderfully plotted novel is an exception!” —Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ayad Akhtar

Christopher Beha is the author of two memoirs, The Whole Five Feet and Why I Am Not an Atheist, and three previous novels, Arts & Entertainments, What Happened to Sophie Wilder, and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award.

A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SPIRITS de Jori Lewis

From the winner of James Beard, Harriet Tubman, and Whiting Awards, a shimmering and unexpected vision of the world we inhabit together.

A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SPIRITS:
On Ecology, Belonging, and the Sublime
by Jori Lewis
The New Press, November 2026
(via The Gernert Company)

From the celebrated journalist whose work has been hailed by Tiya Miles as “broad, complex, and unexpected,” and by Publishers Weekly as “informative and compassionate,” award-winning author Jori Lewis’s stunning new book blends scientific research, myth, folklore, and cultural analysis in a lyrical literary work that observes the natural world as an entry point into understanding the traumas of our history and the unexplored dimensions of our spiritual lives.

A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SPIRITS offers profound meditations on the history of colonialism, racism, and social and ecological change, exploring such wide-ranging subjects as the reproduction crisis of the long-lived African baobab tree in the face of climate change; the evolutionary history of the watermelon and how racist stereotypes related to it developed and persist in the United States; the disquieted spirits of the Senegalese island Sangomar in the wake of new oil and gas exploration in the area; and how, by observing the habits of plants and animals, we may more deeply understand how we create home.

For readers of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams, A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SPIRITS grapples with how we have made, and continue to make, meaning of the world by reading the land, the animals, the water, and the skies.

Jori Lewis is an award-winning journalist whose reports have appeared on PRI’s The World and in Discover Magazine, Pacific Standard, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She is also a contributing editor of Adi, a literary magazine about global politics. The author of Slaves for Peanuts (winner of a Whiting Award, a James Beard Award, and the Harriet Tubman Prize), Lewis splits her time between Chicago, Illinois, and Senegal.